The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Ultimate Experiment, by Thornton DeKy

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

Title: The Ultimate Experiment

Author: Thornton DeKy

Release Date: August 31, 2007 [EBook #22466]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ULTIMATE EXPERIMENT ***

Produced by Greg Weeks, Stephen Blundell and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

[Illustration]

THE ULTIMATE EXPERIMENT

by

THORNTON DeKY

_No living soul breathed upon the
earth. Only robots, carrying on the
last great order._

"They were all gone now, The Masters, all dead and their atoms scattered
to the never ceasing winds that swept the great crysolite city towers in
ever increasing fury. That had been the last wish of each as he had
passed away, dying from sheer old age. True they had fought on as long
as they could to save their kind from utter extinction but the comet
that had trailed its poisoning wake across space to leave behind it,
upon Earth, a noxious, lethal gas vapor, had done its work too well."

No living soul breathed upon the Earth. No one lived here now, but Kiron
and his kind.

"And," so thought Kiron to himself, "he might as well be a great
unthinking robot able to do only one thing instead of the mental giant
he was, so obsessed had he become with the task he had set himself to
do."

Yet, in spite of a great loneliness and a strong fear of a final
frustration, he worked on with the others of his people, hardly stopping
for anything except the very necessities needed to keep his big body
working in perfect coordination.

Tirelessly he worked, for The Masters had bred, if that is the word to
use, fatigue and the need for restoration out of his race long decades
ago.

Sometimes, though, he would stop his work when the great red dying sun
began to fade into the west and his round eyes would grow wistful as he
looked out over the great city that stretched in towering minarets and
lofty spires of purest crystal blue for miles on every side. A fairy
city of rarest hue and beauty. A city for the Gods and the Gods